Ross Clark Ross Clark

Covid sufferers aren’t the only victims of the pandemic

Covid deaths are down to a trickle, but what about the indirect consequences of the pandemic: deaths that come from people failing to access timely medical treatment for other conditions? Cancer Research UK has estimated what it believes to be the backlog from disturbance to cancer services and the reluctance of some people to seek medical advice over the past year.

Between the start of the pandemic and March of this year, it calculates, 45,000 fewer people started cancer treatment than would have been expected without a pandemic. Looking specifically at cancer screening programmes it estimates that 9,200 fewer people started cancer treatment after referrals from these tests. That was equivalent to a 42 per cent drop. The numbers have started to recover but quite slowly: in March this year, only 3 per cent more people started cancer treatment than under normal March 2019.

It is inevitable that the delay in cancer treatment will result in more deaths over the coming years, though we won’t know for some time just how severe this effect will be.

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